Abstract

This study evaluated a method for teaching writers to anticipate readers' comprehension needs. The method, called reader-protocol teaching, involves asking writers to predict readers' problems with a text and then providing them with detailed readers' responses (in the form of think-aloud protocol transcripts) to illustrate how readers construct an understanding of the text. Writers in five experimental classes critiqued a set of ten poorly written instructional texts and then analyzed the protocol transcripts of readers struggling to comprehend these texts. Writers in five control classes were taught to anticipate the reader's needs through a variety of audience-analysis heuristics and collaborative peer-response methods. Pretests and posttests were used to assess improvements in experimental and control writers' ability to anticipate and diagnose readers' comprehension problems. Pretest and posttest materials were expository science texts. Writers taught with the reader-protocol teaching method improved significantly more than did writers in control classes in the number of readers' problems they accurately predicted. In addition, in contrast to writers in control classes, writers taught with the reader-protocol method significantly increased in their ability to (a) diagnose readers' problems caused by textual omissions, (b) characterize problems from the reader's perspective, and (c) attend to global-text problems. Moreover, writers' knowledge of audience acquired in one domain (instructional text) transferred to another (expository science text).

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1992-04-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088392009002001
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (6)

  1. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Written Communication
  5. Technical Communication Quarterly
Show all 6 →
  1. Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Cites in this index (15)

  1. Research in the Teaching of English
  2. College Composition and Communication
  3. Written Communication
  4. Research in the Teaching of English
  5. College Composition and Communication
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  1. Written Communication
  2. Written Communication
  3. Written Communication
  4. College Composition and Communication
  5. Research in the Teaching of English
  6. Research in the Teaching of English
  7. Research in the Teaching of English
  8. Research in the Teaching of English
  9. Research in the Teaching of English
  10. Research in the Teaching of English
Also cites 17 works outside this index ↓
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  3. The psychology of written composition
  4. 10.1207/s1532690xci0401_1
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  8. 10.2307/357843
  9. 10.37514/JBW-J.1981.3.3.06
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  10. The structure of written communication
  11. The language and thought of a child
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  17. 10.1207/s1532690xci0403_1
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